An online petition to keep polluting cruise ships out of Marseille has received more than 50,000 signatures.
The cruise port in the French city, which receives about 2 million visitors annually, is one of the busiest in all of Europe.
However, many residents have had enough as the air pollution gets worse.
Mayor Benoît Payan started a petition in July to forbid the dirtiest ships from docking.
He tweeted last month that the Mediterranean is progressively dying, but the big cruise ship lobbyists want to keep polluting it.
We will keep fighting in Marseille, whether they like it or not.
To date, more than 52,000 people have signed the petition to stop the Mediterranean from ‘suffocating.’
In Marseille, shipping contributes about 10% of the city’s air pollution.
According to a 2018 research by the air quality monitoring organization Atmosud, cruise ship emissions in the city were higher than those of automobiles.
Damien Piga, manager of Atmosud, cautions that a ship parked in Marseille for an hour is equivalent to 30,000 automobiles traveling at 30 km/h in Marseille for an hour.
Depending on the weather, different pollutants have different effects.
“For maritime pollution, we mainly see a plume effect, meaning an impact that is moving and that is defined by the wind direction, Piga explains. “When we are in this plume of pollution, we will have very high concentrations.”
Toxic concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter can have adverse health consequences.
Michèle Rauzier, who has lived in the port area for many years, says she has seen the impact of the pollution first hand.
“In this neighbourhood we have healthy people in good shape – not smokers – who have died from respiratory cancers, and it’s becoming more common,” she says. “So we are very worried.”
Not only Marseille is fighting back against cruise ship air pollution.
Venice forbade big cruise ships from using her lagoon beginning in 2021. Barcelona declared earlier this year that it will charge cruise visitors a “pollution tax.”
Local marine unions in Marseille, though, are worried about the drive to control the sector.
According to Alain Mistre, president of the UMF, cruise ships have a significant impact on the city’s economy (Maritime and River Union of Marseille Fos).
“Marseille is very popular – restaurant owners were telling me just a few days ago that there has been 20 per cent more business since cruise passengers and crew members came back,” he says. “So it is really a financial godsend.”
Prior to the pandemic, the cruise industry contributed about 350 million per year to the local economy.
‘Green’ cruise technology, according to Mistre, is making the sector more environmentally friendly.
Stop Cruises, an anti-cruise group, disagrees.
“For us, the solution is to stop cruises. We think that this industry is structurally incompatible with our world,” says activist Rémy Yves.
“We can look for greenwashing and adaptation solutions, [but] in reality we are going to have mass tourism that is completely against everything, in terms of the consumption of resources.”